


Red Dreams

by johnny cade (johnnycake)



Series: Pleasing the Stars [1]
Category: Watchmen (2009)
Genre: F/M, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 19:35:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5797162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnycake/pseuds/johnny%20cade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon Osterman, also known as Dr. Manhattan, flees Earth to live on Mars after the love of his life abandons him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Dreams

Everything had been a hazy of shadow and color since Laurie had left him. Through shining white that was his eyes, he saw the world, but everything was gray and black now that she was gone and nothing he could do could bring back the happiness he'd once had with her. He had believed that he'd finally found someone who loved him for who he was, who accepted him in all his goodness and faults. But he was wrong. Laurie was Janie all over again and it was that knowledge that tore him apart the most as he stood on the cold, desolate wasteland that was the surface of Mars.

Jon Osterman looked down at his sky blue hands and blinked.

On the backs of his eyelids, he saw their last conversation again. He saw the way she looked at him, desperate and lost and angry. He saw the way he'd looked at her, just as desperate, just as lost, but nothing else. He'd never once been angry with her and he knew, even as he stood on the red sands of red planet that, despite the future he saw, he never really would be.

Now, looking at the tiny blue dot in the Martian sky, he wondered if it'd been something he'd said. He wondered if maybe he'd said something different, he wouldn't be here right now and Laurie would still be sleeping next to him at night.

Again he blinked and saw the last time they'd spoken.

x x x

_Jon grabbed Laurie's arm, spinning her around to face him, trying to keep the desperation from showing in his features, while knowing he was failing miserably. His grip on her arm was tighter than it might've been normally, but oh god. Did she not understand how much he could not lose her?_

_"My attention was completely focused on you," he gasped out, a trace of the desperation now dropping into his tone as well. A spark of hope gripped him as he saw Laurie was taken aback by his words and he calmed ever so slightly. "If you think there's a problem with my attitude, I am prepared to discuss it."_

_She tugged her arm out of his grip, the look on her face going from hopeful confusion to the same sad anger she'd felt only moments earlier._

_"You know how everything in this world fits together except people."_

_The words cut him deeper than he let on. Her next words were lost to him as the ones she'd just spoken reverberated through his eardrums. All he heard was the same dissatisfaction he'd heard in Janie's voice as she'd stormed out the door, angry tears streaming down her cheeks. However, unlike then, he felt the horrible desperation in his chest intensify and double. He had seen this moment before. He knew what was going to happen, but oh god how he wished he were wrong, how he wished for once in his life he was wrong about the future._

_"Have your men stand back. I'm teleporting the reactor to Karnak now," one of the versions of himself behind Laurie said._

_"You're my only remaining link to the world," the true version of himself told her, his eyes not leaving her face once as the large reactor he'd been working on for the past several months disappeared from its place in his workshop._

_The sadness in Laurie's eyes was now erased completely. She brushed away the hair that had been blown in front of her eyes during the transportation of the reactor. For one more brief moment, her eyes were sad, but then emotionlessness replaced the sadness and she said the six words that Jon had been praying she wouldn't._

_"I don't want that responsibility anymore."_

_The reactor blipped back into existence in the cleared out space in the workshop displayed on the television set behind him. Laurie took note of its reappearance. She looked at Jon one last time._

_"He's all yours," she said to Adrian._

_Then she turned on her heel and disappeared through the door._

_Jon watched her go. He listened to her high heels echo and fade down the hallway. Every single other version of himself turned to the door, staring at the space Laurie had just occupied only moments earlier. His arms hung limply on his frame. His lips were turned only slightly downwards, but he might as well have been sobbing. It was the most emotion he'd ever shown someone other than the girl that had just vanished through that door and out of his life._

_"Don't worry, Jon," Adrian said from the television. "She'll be back."_

_Each part of him started walking back into his original self, all of their eyes still fixated on the door. And when he finally spoke again, each of them spoke with him._

_"No, she won't."_

x x x

The memory burned in his mind, tearing his brains apart, piece by piece, taking away every inch of the man that had remained after the accident so many years ago.

He still remembered the day Janie had left him too. He remembered it as clearly as though it had happened yesterday, but every time he'd ever thought about that moment, he only felt relief and exhaustion. Being with Janie had been tiring long before Laurie had come into his life. When she'd finally discovered he was seeing Laurie and left him, he'd been thankful. Grateful, even. He'd known from the moment he first started talking to Laurie that she was who he was truly meant to be with and felt no qualms about being completely honest about this to Janie once he was absolutely certain that feeling was one-hundred percent true.

As horrible as it sounded, Jon hadn't minded breaking Janie's heart.

He loved Laurie. She was who he was supposed to love. And Janie wasn't. She never had been. She'd been a distraction, someone to keep him busy until he found who he was actually looking for. He hadn't bothered trying to explain that to her. She wouldn't have understood anyway, but he wondered now that he was alone again if maybe he should have at least tried.

It was different with Laurie.

Everything was different with Laurie.

As their relationship and happiness had started to deteriorate, so had every other piece of himself, until he was left with a shadow of the person he'd once been, until he was just the human weapon the world said he was. Laurie was what tied him to this earth and as she'd started to let him go, he'd started to let himself go as well.

If he were completely honest with himself, he blamed himself for the way she'd begun to let him drift away. He'd neglected her, not loved her nearly as much as he once had, not treated her as he always had treated her and, though he'd known that was the problem and though he knew he should've done something about it, he still let it happen because he was afraid.

It was around the time that he stopped paying as much attention to Laurie that he'd also developed that block on his ability to see the future.

He'd been so scared of being unable to see what was going to happen that he'd neglected the present moment, neglected the people that meant the most to him.

Neglected the love of his life.

And now he was alone on Mars, looking at a picture of himself from thirty years earlier when he'd been young, normal, and believed himself to be in love with the girl who was in the picture with him, wondering why he was alone when the answer was in the fingers holding the photo to begin with.

 _She no longer loves you,_ a voice in his head reminded him savagely. _And she never will. You are better served staying here than going back to that blue dot that's only ever given you pain and suffering._

Normally, Jon ignored the angry, despicable voices of irrationality in his mind. Normally, he listened to what they had to say and then ignored any advice they gave. He considered the option, as was the rational thing to do, but in the end he always discarded it. The ideas usually made no sense.

And yet…

And yet now the suggestion it'd just given him was the first one he agreed with.

Without Laurie, he had no reason to go back to that blue dot. That blue dot, as the voice had said, had only given him a life of pain and suffering anyway. He owed it nothing. He could stay here on his red planet, create a home for himself that would fascinate him until the end of time. And if they blew each other up in a nuclear holocaust like he presumed they would, so what?

No other part of the universe would notice.

And really, after everything that had happened, after everything that he'd suffered, after everything that had been done to him _on_ that little blue dot of misery, why should he?

* * *

 **NOTE:** i wrote this on impulse before bed, but i am really proud of myself for how it turned out! :3 as always, please leave a review if you read 3


End file.
